The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
A wide variety of computing devices, including many portable devices, support software applications that display interactive digital maps (“mapping applications”). For example, mapping applications may run on laptop and tablet computers, mobile phones, car navigation systems, hand-held global positioning system (GPS) units, etc. These mapping applications can display various types of geographic data including topographical data, street data, urban transit information, and traffic data, in a two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) format.
Although digital maps usually depict “outdoor” map features such as buildings, roads, bodies of water, etc., indoor mapping is also becoming available. For example, a digital map that depicts the footprint of an indoor shopping mall at certain zoom levels can also depict the floor plan of the shopping mall, icons for indoor facilities such as restrooms and elevators, and text labels for various businesses.
In a typical system, indoor map data is stored in a separate database and provided to a client device as a separate layer of data that can be overlaid on a digital map. A mapping application executing on the client device renders a digital map with external features such as roads, parks, bodies of water, building footprints, etc. and, when the user zooms in on a building footprint, generates a separate request (possibly to a separate server) to retrieve indoor map data. As a result, prior to receiving the requested indoor data, the mapping application cannot display any information or controls related to the indoor data. For example, the mapping application cannot display a widget for selecting a floor of a multi-floor building.